A former tech entrepreneur, an acclaimed technology author and an advisor to high-growth start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, Omar Mohout is an entrepreneurship fellow at technology center Sirris as well as affiliated as professor of entrepreneurship at Antwerp Management School. Since 2013, Mohout has been ranking European tech scale-ups that raise capital and started out as spin-offs of just under 200 universities and knowledge institutions.

Based on data covering over 10,000 European scale-ups, UGent (Flanders) comes in at 5th place in the ranking, after big names such as Cambridge University, ETH Zurich, Oxford University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne.

“This result shows how UGent, thanks to Interface and IOF funding, among other mechanisms, has been able to generate strong spin-offs over the past 15 years – and how these companies thrive and grow into successful scale-ups within Ghent’s business ecosystem,” points out Wim Van Camp, general manager at UGent TechTransfer. The local madtech (marketing technology) scene provides just one telling example of the ecosystem’s success.

“Of course, the environment in which spin-offs thrive also plays a crucial role,” emphasizes Omar Mohout. “Start-ups are popping up all over the place, so to speak. The majority, however, disappear as quickly as they appeared. Some remain active on a small scale, while only a minority continue to grow, both organizationally and financially, and raise growth capital to support their upscaling.”

“Ghent is a good example of an ecosystem that has grown in a bottom-up way through the entrepreneurs themselves. For example, Ghent firm Netlog brought forth a whole generation of ambitious tech entrepreneurs. Up to 50 companies have emerged from this dynamic, including the founders of Showpad. The interaction between the city of Ghent and its university further strengthens this ecosystem.”